The House of Vandekar (17 page)

‘Your chest is fine,' he announced. ‘I'll give you a general check over, just to make sure.' And then he covered her with the sheet and stood there smiling down at her.

‘When was your last period, Mrs Vandekar?'

Alice gasped out loud. ‘Why, what do you mean?'

‘Because I think that little fainting fit has a happy explanation. I'd say you were having a baby.'

He wouldn't let her get up for the rest of the day. She had to stay imprisoned in the bed with Lily standing watchdog over her until Alice screamed at her to get out and leave her alone. Then she threw back the covers and went to her long mirror. She stripped off her nightdress and stared in horror at her naked body. There was nothing to show; she was painfully thin. Except her breasts were heavier. And tender when she squeezed them. There was an ooze of watery milk from one nipple.

‘Oh God,' she cried out, ‘what have I done? It can't be true! It can't be!' She'd taken precautions with Nicholas. The same precautions with Hugo. She couldn't be pregnant. And then she remembered the first time, the day Janine Armstrong had come to see him and he'd turned to Alice for solace. That's when it happened, of course, of course, she repeated. She dressed again and sat down on the bed in despair.

It was Nick's child. It would be born a Vandekar.

Alice didn't tell Nick. He was still too frail to be burdened. She didn't tell Lily either and this deception was possible because, unlike with her first pregnancy, she wasn't sick. Her illness was an excuse for resting if she felt tired; she put on a little weight and everyone was pleased. Only Dr Banks knew the reason and she had insisted that he kept her secret. She didn't want to be fussed over, she said, and she was convalescing anyway. After three months, maybe four, she would announce the happy news. Happy news. Happy for no one, she thought in despair. She didn't want a child. Nick couldn't be told in case it worried him, and Hugo would be palmed off with another man's bastard. She didn't suggest an abortion to Dr Banks, she knew better than to even hint at such a thing. She didn't know what to do. For the second time in her life Alice was entrapped in a situation which she couldn't control. The first time had been with Fern.

‘I won't think about it,' she told herself, in imitation of fiction's most famous heroine of the day. ‘I won't think about it today, I'll think about it tomorrow.' But that was so contrary to her nature, that the thought of the child became an obsession. It loomed like a black cloud on the horizon, overshadowing the happy days she spent with Nick coaxing him back to strength and confidence. It spoiled the work she did among the patients, because she felt tired and irritable and couldn't say why. And it raised a barrier between her and Lily for the first time in their association. She had never lied to Lily, and she couldn't imagine Lily lying to her. But she couldn't confide in her because she knew that Lily would guess that Nick, and not Hugo, was the father.

She wrote Hugo long letters and never mentioned the baby that was actually fluttering like a bird inside her. Sometimes she looked at Nick Armstrong and was tempted to shed the burden, to turn to him for strength and comfort for a change. But it wouldn't be fair, she thought; he'd suffered so much. He needed peace and security as much as the love she gave him so unstintingly. And he was changing visibly. The broken fingers had been reset, even the nails so brutally ripped out were growing back. There was a substance to him now, a new enthusiasm for life. He mixed more and more with the other patients. Sometimes Alice suffered an unworthy pang of jealousy when she came down and found him engrossed in a game of bridge instead of waiting for her. He laughed now, and it was strange, strange because for so many weary weeks she'd never seen him smile.

Then one bright day in early July he said to her, ‘Darling, Jim Wallace wrote to me. He's coming down to see me.'

‘Jim Wallace?' For a moment she couldn't place the name.

‘My old boss,' Nick said. ‘From Baker Street. Could we give him some lunch?'

‘Of course. We can run to that. I'll fix it. When's he coming?'

‘He suggested Friday,' he said. He looked bright and enthusiastic. ‘It'll be good to see him. I've never told you about him, have I? He's the most remarkable chap.'

‘Yes,' Alice agreed. For a moment she was back in the office, facing him across the desk. ‘I've known Nick for a long time. I recruited him.'

She said on impulse, ‘What does he want, Nick?'

‘Just to see me, have a chat.'

‘That'll be nice,' she said. ‘It'll do you good.'

For a second he hesitated. Then he took hold of her hand and squeezed it. ‘I'm not an invalid any more, you know,' he said. ‘Thanks to you, darling.'

It was a pleasant lunch. It had been so long since Alice had been able to order food on a proper scale that when the group captain produced a smoked ham their lunch became a feast.

‘A present,' he announced. ‘One of my young ladies has a butcher for a father. Very illegal but jolly nice.' He looked at Alice and Nick and beamed a smile at them, as if he were a father surveying his children.

It made Alice feel uncomfortable. She ate the ham and was surprised at how greedy she felt. But she had an odd and frightening intuition as they sat round the table and he began talking intimately to Nick about people she didn't know. Beware the Greeks …

‘What did you say?' Wallace broke in, and Alice blushed. She must have spoken her thought out loud.

‘Oh – nothing …'

He was genial all over again. ‘You mustn't take any notice of us, my dear Mrs Vandekar. Nick and I were just catching up on old friends. Very boring, do forgive me. Perhaps we could go off after lunch and have our shop talk later?' He turned from her and Nick said promptly, ‘Yes, why not?'

After lunch she did feel sick. It must be that damned ham, she decided. Junior doesn't like it. She went upstairs and lay down, trying not to think.

It wasn't the ham, and it wasn't the baby, which was quiescent at the moment. It was the instinct that the group captain had come down with a purpose, and that purpose was to take Nicholas away from her. And that Nicholas was getting ready to go. She got up and hurried downstairs. Too late. They'd had their shop talk, whatever it was. He'd gone. And there was Nick, smiling and eager to tell her the wonderful news.

‘He wants me to go back,' he said. ‘Back to Baker Street. I'm fit enough and he says I could be a tremendous asset. I've got first-hand knowledge, darling. I can really help the people going out. I can brief them in a way that no one else can who hasn't been through it. And he made one very important point.' He paused for emphasis. ‘I can prove that it's possible to come back.'

Alice said slowly, ‘The others didn't. The other ones who were caught.'

‘No,' he agreed. ‘But that's war. Soldiers get killed. We're soldiers. Oh, Alice, try to understand. I want to be useful. I want to do something. I can't go on lotus-eating here with you while the people I trained with need my help.'

He put his arms around her. He couldn't see the desolation on her face.

‘I love you, Alice,' he said. ‘You saved my life. I could stay with you for ever and be perfectly happy. But I wouldn't be much of a man if I stood aside and let my friends fight for me. I wouldn't be worthy of you.'

He made her look up at him and saw the tears in her eyes. ‘Don't, my darling,' he begged. ‘It's not a real separation. I'll be in London, I'll get down to see you and you can come up to me. I'll get a medical clearance. Jim says I'll have to go back and see the trick cyclists at Princess Mary's, but that won't be a problem. And there's another reason.'

‘You don't have to explain,' she said. ‘I was just being selfish. I'm sorry.'

‘I want to tell you,' he insisted. ‘You mentioned the others who didn't come back. I was half crazy, crazy enough to believe I'd betrayed Janine when they taunted me. I don't know how much I did tell those bastards. Jim said we'd been penetrated and I wasn't responsible for giving anyone else away. But I'm not sure, Alice. I'll never be sure. That's why I've got to go back.'

‘Yes,' she said. ‘Yes, you have. But will you promise me something?'

‘If I can,' he said gently.

‘You won't let them persuade you to go back to France. You've got to promise me that.'

He kissed her and held her close to him. He stroked the bright blonde hair. ‘I couldn't go back,' he told her. ‘My cover's blown. I'd be arrested in a matter of hours. So I don't have to promise you, sweetheart. It doesn't arise. I only wish it was possible.'

And when she drew back and stared at him, he smiled down at her. ‘You see what a marvellous job you've done. You've given me my courage and my hope. I can face it again, because of you. So you be proud – and no more tears.'

After that it was impossible to tell him that she was pregnant. He had to be free. There could be no moral blackmail exerted to tie him to her.

The next two weeks were a time of extremes for Alice. Extremes of happiness when they were together – even his lovemaking became a kind of comfort – and extremes of misery, when she thought of life without him. Because Alice knew that she would lose him when he left Ashton. The more he made plans to return or for her to go to London, the more she realized that neither would be possible without telling him the truth. The lie would be worse, if he believed that she had slept with Hugo and conceived a child after so many years of separation. So she clung to him for the time that remained and tried not to think of the next few months.

He went to Princess Mary's and she tasted the loneliness to come. Ashton was empty without him, and she couldn't sleep because the baby was moving so strongly inside her.

Dr Banks paid an unexpected call. ‘Just to check on you,' he said cheerfully.

Lily had sought him out. She was worried about Mrs Vandekar. Her mistress was off her food and looked unwell. Lily hadn't been let into the secret, the doctor knew. But the time was coming when Alice's condition couldn't be kept secret any longer.

Alice submitted unwillingly.

He listened to the foetal heartbeat and announced that it was strong and everything was fine. Except that she seemed rather peaky. Doing too much, he suggested. She denied it.

By the way, he'd had a call from one of his colleagues at Princess Mary's. Flight Lieutenant Armstrong had passed his medical. Not Al of course, but enough to resume light duties. He was sure she'd be pleased to hear that. So much was due to her nursing, after all. Yes, Alice agreed, it was wonderful news, and she thought that if he stayed another minute she would burst into tears.

‘Mrs Vandekar, I hope you'll join us this evening.' The senior RAF officer was a group captain who had bailed out over the North Sea returning from bombing industrial targets in the Ruhr. There were four bullet holes in him and he'd contracted pneumonia from floating in the icy seas for two hours before Air Sea Rescue picked him up. He was all of twenty-six. He'd been at Ashton for three months and had at last been pronounced fit enough to return to duty. There was a batch of young men ready to leave. Some would be reclassified, others given a medical discharge and a pension. The miserly sums horrified Alice when she heard of them. Before the war she had spent the equivalent of a year's disablement pension on a new evening dress.

‘We're planning a little party for you,' the group captain said. ‘We wanted it to be a surprise but you can't keep much of a secret around here. So will you come and join us after supper?'

Alice said, ‘I'd be delighted. How sweet of you – I don't deserve a party.'

He had a cheery laugh. ‘Oh yes you do! The boys won't leave here without saying thank you. And I certainly won't. About seven o'clock, then?'

‘Seven will be fine,' Alice felt like laughing and crying at the same time. He looked so ridiculously young, and his breezy manner hid the anguish of having lost three members of his crew. Alice had seen that side of the coin when he first came. He learned how to cry on her shoulder. Now she wanted to cry on his because she was losing Nick and carrying a child that couldn't be acknowledged. But she smiled and thanked him again, saying what fun it would be. He hesitated for a moment. She saw a tinge of red run up into his cheeks.

‘You wouldn't put on something specially pretty for us, would you, mam? The boys would love it, if you wouldn't mind.'

‘Of course I will,' Alice answered. ‘I'll find something special.'

Lily helped her choose a prewar evening dress. It was bright blue, slim fitting – for a moment Alice panicked, remembering how quickly she had outgrown her clothes with Fern. But all was well, the dress fitted.

‘You look like your old self, madam,' Lily said. She was a beauty, no mistake. Couldn't look plain if she got herself up in an old potato sack, Lily thought proudly. And that hair was a wonder. Lily had brushed it and dressed it, and found a big artificial silk flower to pin at the back. ‘There now,' she said. ‘You'll do!'

He wasn't back, that was the trouble. The week had run on to ten days and for the last three days he hadn't telephoned, so of course she had that drawn look from worrying and missing him. There were times, Lily said to herself as Alice went downstairs, there were times when, much as she liked the flight lieutenant, she wouldn't be sorry to see the back of him for her lady's sake. He took too much out of her. No man was worth that.

The men were gathered in the hall below, and when Alice came down the stairs they gave a spontaneous cheer. The group captain came up and took her hand.

‘Thank you,' he said and made a gallant little bow. ‘You look smashing. Air Force blue, isn't it?'